Beginner Guide
While the game mechanics are overall easy to understand, there are some things that every starting player should know before making irreversible choices that may affect their enjoyment of the game. Furthermore, there are many ways to get a strong head start that many of the veteran players could have benefited from. Most of these tips are not listed in the to Play tab below the playing screen. This page will be a central collection point for experienced players to share tips with newer players. 1 In the early stages of the game, Silver Units should never be used as fodder when combining This is because Silver Units are essential in Class Evolution (referred to as Class Change or CC in this guide) and should thus be conserved. Do not follow the in-game tips that urge you to do Cost Reduce (CR) and Skill Upgrade (SU), it is part of the game's gimmick. Silver units can only be obtained once from every Story Map as a completion bonus. Later on they can be obtained in two ways. They may drop from exclusive Event Missions, but the drop rate is rather low and the missions require fairly good units. The other option is to use the Shrine. The Premium and Rare summons will require Sacred Crystals which are very valuable, and the Base summons which requires gold gives you on average one random Silver Unit for every 60,000+ gold spent. These options are simply too much for a new player, unless you are willing to spend real money to purchase a lot of Sacred Crystals. 2 Do not CC your units before they have reached their max level While you can CC your Silver, Gold, Platinum and Black units from level 30 onward, it is not wise since their max level before CC is 50. Thus if you CC them at 30 instead of 50, they will lose 20 levels worth of stats permanently. After you CC a unit, it will revert to level 1 while keeping all the stats they earned prior to CC. A new level max supersedes the pre-CC max level, which for Silver Units is level 50 while higher rarity units can reach even higher levels. 3 Plan ahead on which units to CC Planning ahead is essential in the start since the missions will get more difficult as you progress through the game. Below is a list of some units that you will want to CC before others, while still following tip #2. Katie: Soldiers like Katie or Phyllis have the ability Call for Reinforcements, where the Soldier can add Unit Points (UP) to your total by activating the skill after roughly 30 secs of initial waiting time. Katie in particular can upgrade this skill from Call for Reinforcements II to Call for Reinforcements III after CC, upon which she will grant 15 UP instead of 10 UP on a regular basis. This ability is incredibly useful early on any map, and Katie herself can become a very decent early tank for all but the most dangerous foes, especially coupled with a healer. Furthermore, she gains the ability to block 3 enemies instead of two once CC'd. Katie can be earned by 3-starring her final drill, and is incredible to have early in the game! Archer: Archers have a high damage output against any non-armored foe and they gain an increased range after CC, making them even better at shooting down aerial enemies. Their relatively low unit cost means you can deploy them very early on any map. Healer: Healers, like archers will gain increased range after CC. This gives you more diversity in their placement on the field to either cover more allies, or to be further away from harm. Witch and Mage: Witches and Mages gain increased range after CC and both ignore defense. Witches can slow enemies while mages can deal damage to all foes near the main target. But note that mage's UP rise by 5 instead of 3 when you CC them, which might make them harder to deploy early. This two classes can attack aerial enemies as well. Heavy Armor: Heavy Armors are defense-oriented units that serve as a good tank against both swarms of enemies and singular strong enemy boss units. They can block up to 3 foes at a time and can take heavy punishment without dying. They have the highest HP(health) and defense power of all classes, and upon CC, usually provide players an opportunity to dramatically increase their defensive power even further. Best coupled with mages and healers as they have low attack power. Other Units: Once you have some good units CC'd, it's time to think about the rest. Players are somewhat split between which units are practical or not, but it is generally advised to have at least one of each unit for different situations, plus additional units of the ones aforementioned. The other basic units would be useful as follows: Rogues serves to provide a luck-based assassination option in case you encounter a particularly tough foe early on a map, like an enemy heavy armor you cannot kill due to UP limitations preventing you from deploying a more formidable formation of Mages, Witches, Healers, and tanking units. The luck-based part of these units make some players avoid them. Valkyries can provide a sizable boost in UP if deployed early enough, since they recover one UP for every enemy they personally slay. Valkyries also benefit from lower withdrawal costs - instead of the standard 50% loss in UP cost when you withdraw a unit, Valkyries only lose 30%, and 20% upon CC. Finally, Valkyries are fairly good at tanking enemy casters when other options such as princesses and event units aren't available to most new players because of their Magic Resistance (MR). Bandits can be used as something in between. They have high health and attack, but low defense and often coupled with a skill that increases their attack at the cost of defense. Their physical damage is thus very high, and is great when you know they will not need their defense for when tanking casters or smashing small weak enemies. Finally: What units you can obtain largely varies, but you will in general want two of each ranged type and later two heavy armors. If you have trouble, the community is always happy to give you advice. Keep this in mind; ranged units get increased range after CC and that is a great boost! 4 Bronze Units can be useful as well! Bronze units have a level cap of 40 and cannot be CC'd, but you might want to spare a few from being fodder because they do have their usefulness. Since they are easy to obtain, you can reduce their cost by combining them such that they can be deployed very swiftly. Bronze Soldiers in particular are incredibly cheap; you can CR them down to a UP cost of only 4! Deploying them is great in many maps that require rapid deployment at several locations. Bronze archers are vital in many male-only missions as they are the only cheap ranged units available in such situations. As Heavy Armors are relatively rare early in the game, a bronze heavy infantry will suffice as a secondary tank until you manage to get a better replacement. Bronze mages have the advantage of being significantly cheaper than their higher grade counterparts and thus can be deployed much earlier. 5 There is only one male healer in the game Yes, that's right! Only one male healer in the game, so if you are able to summon him, don't use him as fodder. He can be very useful in male-only missions. 6 Enemies have fixed spawn points If you're not doing well on a certain quest, drill or what not, try lasting as long as you can and then memorize or take notes on where the enemies are coming from. So far, enemy spawning is fixed in all maps, this means you can predict with certainty where, when and how many enemies will spawn. Keeping track of this information can save you from a lot of frustration. There are also plenty of Youtube guides posted by players for particularly troublesome maps. Try searching for the mission name if you want this kind of help. 7 Grinding is an essential task in this game Like it or not, grinding is an essential task in this game. Maps that are easy to grind early and give good units for combining include: Pastoral Gate, Mysterious Beast, the Royal Road, Tower Overwatch, and the Wolfpack. Once you are able to easily complete Return to Ruin, that map will be your best grinding place for unit experience in the game as long as you have gold for combining. Castle Retake is an extremely difficult mission for new players, but once you can beat that map, you will unlock Dragon Hunting and Flame Dragon, both of which are excellent grinding places for your Prince's experience that can also provide decent unit experience without hitting your gold reserves nearly as hard as Return to Ruin. Note that Dragon Hunting only drops a maximum of 4 units instead of the usual 5. This chart lists vital statistics for grinding mission maps. 8 Raising affection Raising affection is important since it increases vital stats of your units. This comes hand in hand with CC, as you can only raise a unit's affection past 50% after CC, a lump sum of stats is awarded at 100% affection and unlock the second scene. Some units like princesses and certain event units, cannot be CC'd but is able to reach 100% affection. Early in the game, raising affection is very difficult, but it becomes easier once you unlock the Challenge Quest - Low Cost Battle. While some grinding is needed to get that far, units with 20 levels or so should be adequate. Once you are able to CC your units, try going for Phalanx 2 and grinding for affection items there, as this map has the potential of dropping two Ruby for every successful attempt. You will need high level Mages and Witches and possibly decent tanks as well to beat it. 9 Daily Missions Once you feel comfortable with your progress, you should consider doing Daily Missions. Generally speaking, the H(hard) mission is the most cost effective since the drop rates are much higher than in N(normal) and E(easy); however, it is recommended that you CC many of the recommended units in point #2 before attempting H difficulty. Details are on the Daily Missions page. Most players highly recommend running the Monday and Thursday dailies on as high a difficult setting as you can as soon as possible. 10 Don't waste spirits You can combine a platinum armor (fodder units with base XP of 1000) earned from the Monday daily mission with 3 spirits of the same rarity as the unit you want to combine for a gigantic 8000 XP bonus. Two such combinations are enough to bring a silver unit from level 1 to level 50, although it is recommended to use them later in the leveling process (at lv40-42) on units of higher rarity when it becomes extremely gold-intensive. Consult the XP Chart for optimal Spirit/Platinum armor usage. You can also combine excess spirits together with bronze units for hefty XP bonuses, as bronze units offer more XP than the iron units you typically obtain from story mission maps. Make sure the spirits are of the same rarity as the unit you want to combine to gain the full multiplicative bonus. Low Cost Battle drops Silver spirits while Phalanx 2 drops Gold and Platinum spirits. Both missions were recommended in point #8 as they are a great source for spirits. Rainbow spirits especially are quite rare. Hold onto these until you are certain you want to SU a specific unit. 11 Be mindful with Sacred Crystal (SC) usage If you are already spending a lot of real money on this game, you may skip this part. At first you will be rolling in SC because of the ease of 3-starring the first several story missions. Later on, the flow of SC will slow down to a trickle, with the stamp card giving at best 5 SC per month provided you login everyday, and the one or two events per month granting opportunities to earn some more through 3-starring event maps. Some players advocate for constant re-rolling of your account (typically by just registering another email account) until you are able to summon a black unit from the Shrine. Others advocate for hoarding SC to use only for events or when the Premium Unit in the Shrine is offering a promotional "chance up" for a particular desirable class of units. In either case, don't spend SC until you are absolutely sure about your decision. If anyone has some Beginner Tips he or she wants to share, feel free to add them. Some helpful External Links (use google translate): http://seesaawiki.jp/aigis/ (Japanese wiki) http://aigis.gcwiki.info/ (Japanese wiki) http://www.hongfire.com/forum/showthread.php/437500-Nutaku-Millennium-War-Aigis (English game info, includes lots of helpful charts, info, and strategies) Category:Guides